Everything Is Blue
by valeriange
Summary: (Soulmate AU where you don't see colors until you first touch your soulmate.) Pharma saw them instantly, the moment he shook Ratchet's hand in the Iaconian Academy, but Ratchet makes this whole soulmate thing a lot more complicated than Pharma imagined.


Pharma hadn't been surprised to receive a message confirming his acceptance to the Iaconian Academy of Science and Technology's medical school. He knew he was good enough to be admitted regardless, and he had spent plenty of time wheedling to the professors and administrators – though he had yet to track down the CMO, but that could be forgiven.

Pharma didn't know much about him, other than the basics that were published by the Iaconian Academy's data-net. He was an older mech named Ratchet, a graduate of the Academy, appointed Chief Medical Officer by Nominus Prime himself. Pharma didn't feel the need to learn anything more – anyone with connections like that was someone he was going to resign himself to spending a lot of time with, whether this CMO liked it or not. Some opportunities, you just couldn't pass up.

He planned his first day accordingly, showing up with a fresh paintjob and a million-shanix smile. Few of the other new students were flight-frames like himself, and he was the only Seeker among them, standing out from all the rest. Familiar faces greeted him by designation when he entered the lobby, and he enjoyed the befuddled gazes cast between the other students over just how he – a student of their same year – had managed to become acquainted with seemingly all the right people. Well. He _did_ have talent.

A mech with red and silver paint greeted them – and Pharma by designation – and gestured them toward a hall beyond the lobby. Pharma tuned out his standard greeting, but then "—and Ratchet's over there, the tall one by that femme – he's the CMO, so you'll—"

Pharma took the lead in front of his fellow students and immediately started walking in the direction the mech had pointed. Behind him, he heard the mech call out a warning – something about being cautious about startling this Ratchet – that Pharma instantly dismissed. Any faux pas could be rectified with a show of charisma.

Ratchet was talking quietly in a deep, nondescript voice to the femme, standing a polite few steps away from her. Pharma took advantage of the position to insert himself between them and grab Ratchet's hand in his own. "Pleasure to meet you, Ratchet. My designation's Pharma."

The words were rehearsed, a standard greeting that was confident enough to set him apart and typical enough to not get him tossed out on his aft for disrespect. So Pharma didn't know why his fuel tank seemed to turn upside down and he felt as though his whole frame shifted in the moments after.

He reset his optics. Then did it again, just to be sure.

Ratchet's red hand was still caught in his own blue one. Oh. Inside, Pharma could only smile. Outside, his perfectly even grin never faltered.

Ratchet's face-plates changed into an unreadable smile, a slight twist at the edge of his lips that was hardly noticeable. And Pharma felt like he knew. Like everything had clicked. Like he had won. "Nice to meet you. If you don't mind." And he gestured for Pharma to move out of the way.

Pharma moved his left wing and saw the femme – colored in soft yellow and shining white paint – still standing there, with her servos clasped in front of her and her blue optics glinting tiredly.

And he wondered, as he stepped back to allow Ratchet to face the femme again, what this meant. Ratchet, a trained doctor and CMO by the orders of the Prime himself, would not allow something personal to interfere with work, of course. So whatever Pharma saw, whatever he saw, would have to wait for later.

* * *

So Pharma waited. And waited. And still hoped.

Because he knew, he _knew_ there must be a reason why Ratchet singled him out from the rest of the students, why he chose Pharma to act as his assistant in cases or his aid in surgery, why he let Pharma have all the interesting cases. If it were anyone else, Pharma would have brushed it off as someone appreciated his natural talent and giving him the challenges he deserved. But Ratchet didn't seem like the sort to play favoritism.

But was it favoritism, if Pharma really was the best? Was Ratchet just doing what he considered best for his patients, unaware of what Pharma thought it all might mean?

Below him, Pharma's hands gave the slightest shake, so minute that the fuel line he had pinched didn't even shift. But Ratchet noticed. He always noticed, with Pharma.

"Cauterize it and keep going," Ratchet said, which was about as encouraging as Ratchet got.

Pharma did.

He could worry about seeing the brilliant pink color of another bot's energon over his servos later.

* * *

Pharma expected things to change after he graduated, at least. He bade his time while in the Academy as a medical student. In his last years, he spent superfluous amounts of time in Ratchet's office, sometimes studying, sometimes talking, more often than not by the end of the year just reading with his pedes propped up on Ratchet's desk and his wings stretched out while Ratchet busied himself with something or another. There was something between them, something comfortable and easy and quiet. And Pharma found himself unable to believe it was anything but Ratchet seeing the colors too. He had to. It explained everything.

But Ratchet, as CMO and his superior, couldn't exactly make a move, and if Pharma did, then Ratchet wouldn't be able to reciprocate anyway. As long as he attended the school, he couldn't have Ratchet. But Pharma didn't mind, because he was well on the track to graduating early and at the top of his class. He could have Ratchet soon.

But then graduation came. Maybe Pharma was a bit dramatic, but he expected Ratchet to do something dramatic. Maybe kiss him as soon as he stepped off the stage. Sweep him off his feet and confess his undying love for him in front of all his classmates, a final blow to drive home the point that Pharma had _won_, had beaten them in every way possible.

He didn't really expect that last part to happen. As well-known as Ratchet was, he was a private bot. But he expected something.

So when graduation passed with no dramatic declarations of love, Pharma dropped into Ratchet's office. He was scribbling in a patient's file, though he did look up enough to give Pharma one of the truest smiles he had ever been cast by Ratchet, and said, "I'm proud of you, kid. You deserve everything you got."

And that was the end of it. Ratchet went back to work, and Pharma read a data-pad, and seethed quietly in that chair that was far too uncomfortable for someone of Ratchet's rank to own. He deserved _more_ than he had gotten.

* * *

Sometimes they talked about religion. Pharma is pretty passive about the whole concept, but Ratchet had a furious distaste for it all. Pharma could understand. Ratchet deserved someone who could, after all.

They had basically moved in together in the time since Pharma's graduation. Ratchet said it was practical, since they both almost lived at the hospital as it was. Pharma saw it as a blatant excuse, a way for Ratchet to try and write off his feelings like always. He felt victorious. Vindicated.

And it struck Pharma, while he was sorting through his old undergrad notes while he unpacked his things in Ratchet's house, that the whole concept of seeing colors once you touch your destined spark-mate was religious in nature. Something Ratchet despised. If Ratchet ever did see the colors, he was stubborn and angry enough to ignore them.

And then Pharma thought, maybe Ratchet didn't see them at all. Maybe he disbelieved in it all so fiercely that none of it could reach his spark, and he simply didn't know.

But Pharma wanted to know. He hadn't gotten this far in medicine without a drive in his processor to know more.

So he started lashing out in the most childish way possible. He went to the local shop and bought the most garish shade of yellow he could find, then made his way down to the industrial district and bought the dirtiest-looking rust-repellant brown paint he could locate.

He didn't have to worry about Ratchet showing up any time soon, because he had been disappearing with that officer, Orion Pax, more and more lately for longer and longer periods of time. Any day he wasn't at the Academy, he was off somewhere with Orion Pax. And for once, Pharma was grateful, because he could do _this_.

Sunstreaker owed him a favor for setting him up with a nurse at the Academy, and he called it in, must to Sunstreaker's disdain. He shoved a wiry brush missing a solid third of its bristles into Sunstreaker's servo and dropped the cans of paint at his feet.

Sunstreaker asked, "Whose house are we ruining tonight?"

"Mine," Pharma said, and gestured to the living room.

It took two hours of painting to cover the large room in the two shades – the right and left wall a shade of yellow reminiscent of half-processed energon regurgitated by a sickly bot, and the front and back a brutal shade of dark, red-tinged brown like the uniform lines of industrial factories in Rodion's Dead End. The paint was applied unevenly, some spots darker than others and a few places at the edges missing the new coat entirely and still shining with the pleasant light grey it had been before.

Sunstreaker looked almost ill. "It's disgusting."

Pharma just smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. "Thank you. I'll remember this."

"Please don't." And Sunstreaker sulked out of the house in shame.

That night, Ratchet came home later than usual, with dirt staining his white armor and scuffs across his red shoulders, as though he had been lifting things. He almost sagged in physical weariness, which was not something Ratchet did.

Pharma waited in the corner, where the two walls of yellow and brown met, a data-pad in his hand as he feigned disinterest with Ratchet's arrival.

It took Ratchet a moment to locate him. He only said, "Why are you in the corner?"

Pharma spark twisted, but he shrugged. "I wanted to sit in this chair."

"You told me you hated that chair. You said it was ugly. Too brown and not enough gray. Whatever that means."

Pharma just shrugged again and didn't answer.

Ratchet sighed and turned off the lights. "I'm going to bed."

"I'll be a while," Pharma said.

And he sat alone in the newly ugly room, a data-pad in his hands that was basically invisible to his eyes, and wondered why it was that he could see it all but Ratchet couldn't.

* * *

Ratchet's Dead End Clinic was the worst-kept secret on the whole of Cybertron.

Pharma hated it. The idea of it made him seethe. The idea that hands as talented as Ratchet's, that a mind as brilliant as Ratchet's, was wasting waking hours fixing bots who couldn't give less of a damn, who would go back out and frag themselves up the same way and undo all his beautiful work, made his spark burn with indignation. Ratchet deserved better. He deserved a whole hospital under his command, which he had in Iacon. Yet he left it to fix up leakers and addicts in Rodion's Dead End.

But as the nights passed on slowly, with Ratchet coming home to their flat at odder and odder hours every week, less and less frequently, Pharma started to come around to the idea that perhaps, perhaps he wasn't the reason Ratchet saw color in the world.

They were both medics. They both loved medicine far more than they could ever love each other. Pharma wouldn't hesitate to choose his craft over Ratchet, and he knew without any doubts in his processor that Ratchet would do the same. But while Ratchet was always the one bot that Pharma could imagine leaving the hospital in the evening to come home to, Ratchet didn't see anyone – not even Pharma – being that bot.

So perhaps Ratchet had always seen colors. Maybe he had seen the still images of bots in medical textbooks and seen the vivid pink energon and grey lines with all the clarity that Pharma saw when he looked at Ratchet.

Pharma could accept that. He could accept that Ratchet loved medicine more than he could ever love Pharma, because Pharma knew if it came down to it, which one he would sacrifice as well. And they were even.

Pharma hated that clinic. He hated the idea of it. He hated the look of it. He hated the bots in it. He hated Ratchet being it. But, sometimes, there was simply nowhere better to be.

He started to consider the most horrible idea lately. Maybe Ratchet was his spark-mate, but he wasn't Ratchet's. Maybe Ratchet didn't have a spark-mate at all. Maybe he was destined to love medicine more than he could love any bot.

But if that were the case, then Pharma would not be defeated. He would insert himself into every medical area that he could alongside Ratchet until Ratchet couldn't think of medicine without thinking of him too. Once the two ideas were inseparable in Ratchet's subconscious, Pharma would finally receive the reciprocation he desired. He would finally win.

So Pharma carved himself out a little corner in the Dead End Clinic. He didn't touch the bots – he left that slag to Ratchet. Instead, he catalogued, and wrote, and filed, and collected histories and stories from those who were able to talk coherently. He made himself indispensable at Ratchet's side.

And then Orion Pax showed up with a bot in his arms. No information was given to Pharma, and he didn't ask, because one look at the bot and Pharma saw a lost cause. He was a mess of white plating blackened with grime and dried energon stains, crackling with the after-effect of circuit boosters. Pharma doubted even Ratchet's talented hands could bring him back from that.

Not that that kept Ratchet from trying.

Hours – boring, boring hours – passed by, with Pharma shooing away any bot that crept into the clinic with the curt message that Ratchet was preoccupied preparing a dead bot for his upcoming funeral, as though anyone would mourn the loss of a leaker in the Dead End.

Ratchet didn't make a habit of speaking to his patients. Sometimes he sent them away with curt orders they wouldn't follow, because being nice to bots who knew nothing but how to take advantage was a lost cause. Not that Ratchet's method seemed to work either, but lose causes were lost causes, Pharma supposed.

But in the quiet of the evening, Pharma heard Ratchet's voice drifting in from the makeshift surgical bay. His tone was kind, far kinder than he had ever spoken to Pharma with. Pharma wrote it off as Ratchet being soft for the bot's sake, whereas he had never had to pull his punches with Pharma.

On the way back to their flat, Ratchet spoke quaintly, as though his hands hadn't been buried in a bot's internals a few hours earlier, pulling them back from an overdose. The streets were almost completely black by this hour, but the both of them had walked this route so much it was almost instinct.

"—said his name was Drift," Ratchet was saying. "I told him to head down to the council, see if they could do anything."

Pharma nodded like he gave a damn about what happened to a Dead End junkie.

Ratchet kept talking as they approached the flat, and Pharma absentmindedly keyed in the code as he nodded along appropriately.

"—Orion isn't sure what happened to the other two, the ones who—" Ratchet stopped as Pharma flicked on the lights, pausing stiffly in the doorway.

Ratchet stared over Pharma's shoulder like he had seen a phantom, but a quick glance in that direction greeted Pharma with a typical view of their house, just as they had left it – mostly empty, with Ratchet's one ugly grey-brown chair and the few pieces of furniture Pharma had conned him into getting over the years. There wasn't exactly anywhere for an intruder to hide. Pharma cast a questioning look Ratchet's way.

Ratchet's eyes scanned over the room again. "Has…" He paused, then fixed Pharma with a look. "Has it always been this horrible color?"

Pharma's spark felt as though it had stopped. For a moment, he saw nothing but Ratchet's optics, still blue and still looking the same as they had this morning. And in his mind's eye, all he could see was that Primus-damned addict.

Pharma just put on a smile. "I never noticed," he said, and turned the lights back off. "Good night, my beloved."


End file.
